Custom-made ABUS HB system for bespoke furniture

“The wood we work with is as unique as the tree it has come from.” This is the motto of the company Holzmanufaktur Lorenz (www.holzmanufaktur-lorenz.de), a joinery at Kirchzarten which is near Freiburg in the far south west corner of Germany. Holzmanufaktur Lorenz make sophisticated furniture and facilities under the guidance of the company owner, Mr Jürgen Lorenz, and with the help of 30 staff. Modern designs as well as the high quality of his furniture and facilities are important to Mr Lorenz, himself a master joiner and MBA, when it comes to manufacturing bespoke items for hotels, banks, conference rooms, sitting rooms, and kitchens. He welcomes his customers in a spacious exhibition and meeting area to present his designs. It goes without saying that this area of the company was also designed and built by the company itself.

Once the customer has decided on the design, the furniture is made to measure in the adjacent joinery which is composed of two separate building parts. The production area was redesigned early in 2013 when Mr Jürgen Lorenz took over a disused hall as the new abode for his company. Emphasis was put on modern industrial technology and high-quality machinery when planning the factory building. The company is able to manufacture lacquered glass surfaces, coated boards and panels as well as ornately carved contours that give a modern design to the work pieces. The required individual parts of the work pieces are manufactured in the machine room, and then partly or completely mounted in the assembly area once they have been coated in the paint shop.

Two aspects that a crane system should satisfy were very important for Mr Lorenz when planning the material transport within the factory buildings: servicing all machinery placed in the production area according to their order of use and ergonomic work kind to their backs for his employees. So the installation of an ABUS HB system was planned right from the start when the production was set up. The suspended rail system with 500 kg load capacity has been designed to load the different machines and to shift the wooden parts. The crane track is suspended from the ceiling and is 17 metres long; the double girder crane suspended from it measures 12 metres. These dimensions of the crane make it possible to serve almost the entire area of the machinery. The hoist used is an ABUS electric chain hoist ABUCompact GM2. This hoist moves between the two steel profiles of the double girder crane ZHB. As the hoist is suspended between the crane girders very little space is lost under the ceiling of the building and at the same time the placement of the chain hoist between the crane girders allows the lifting height to be particularly favourable. The crane system has been equipped with a vacuum lift. ABUS supplied ready-made plug-in connections and connections to install the ancillary equipment on the crane. At the start of the manufacturing process the vacuum lift takes the raw materials such as boards and panels out of the stock area. Even areas right next to the walls of the building can be served without any problems thanks to the very small approach dimensions of the crane and the raw parts are fed into the next step of production. The considerable height of the building would have made it difficult to manually position the crane and the hoist precisely by pulling the load hook, thus the decision was taken to employ an electric travel motor. Now the wooden boards can be positioned exactly and lowered onto the next machine by using the electric push button pendant.

In many individual production steps bespoke furniture and made-to-measure facilities are created. The highly qualified joiners are assisted by the ABUS HB system composed of standard components, but also tailor-made for the staff and the manufacturing process of the company Holzmanufaktur Lorenz.